Good morning all.
I am a newbie to this forum so please excuse the rather long winded post…
I have only recently come across my new gardening guru Charles and his no dig approach. I am trying to take in all the masses of information and advice given on the forum/website as well as reading a couple of Charles’ books.
I can easily adapt my very small garden to no dig, but my problem is an allotment which we took over in January. The total area of the plot is 375 square metres and it was knee high in grass and weeds when we got it. It wasn’t until we started to chop down the grass etc. that we found that almost all of the plot was covered in carpet which had been down so long that a lot of it was knitted together or had virtually become part of the soil structure with vegetation growing on, through or round it. We have removed almost all of the carpet but now have a plot with patches of bare earth and which is not very flat and a bit tricky to walk on. Unfortunately we also have couch, brambles, dandelion, clover, buttercup and lots of other weeds which I haven’t been able to identify yet, and loads of slugs.
We have made two large bays, one for green waste and one for a pile of horse manure which we have delivered.
On the plus side, we inherited some fruit bushes (I think gooseberry, blackcurrant and jostaberry), rhubarb (kept walking all over it to begin with as it was so well hidden in the wilderness, but is recovering now that we have put a frame round it and mulched with horse manure and compost) and four fruit trees, which I understand to be pear, apple and plum.
Can anyone offer any advice/suggestions for us to go forward? I want to at least be able to keep it tidy/manageable especially as the people from the next plot have made it clear they don’t want ours encroaching onto their very tidy and neat dig plot! I plan to grow veg, fruit and flowers but not sure I want to cultivate the whole plot just yet.
Thanks.
